Reflections of a Yoga Teacher – Imagine Teaching Yoga Without Poses

1. Reflections of a Yoga Teacher – Imagine Teaching Yoga Without Poses I am always curious about how a person discovered yoga. What about it made her fall in love? How did it all go down? What might have been the story behind her yoga journey? A reflection: As a yoga student and yoga teacher, a yogi, there are many friends in my circle who have seriously practiced yoga for decades without practising one yoga pose. Their desire was self knowledge and peace of mind and the vehicle chosen to realize that dream was meditation. Simple yoga steps that can greatly improve the quality of your life Meditation - An Inner Limb of Yoga Many years ago I meditated and played with a yoga meditation group. I use the word “play” because even though meditation is seen as serious, we chose fun and fulfilling activities that morphed us into a service community. The experience was very fulfilling mentally and spiritually and we never practised yoga poses as a group. In those youthful days we sat cross-legged on the floor easily and comfortably. So let me correct that statement about not practising yoga poses as a group. That ability to sit still on the floor and to stand upright and still I consider not one but two yoga poses!

2. One activity the group embraced was the generation of inspirational thoughts, big ideas, or provoking questions. Each day a new thought was written on a blackboard outside the meditation center. The blackboard was labeled “Thought for Today”. The meditation center was near a crossroad and many pedestrians and drivers stopped to imbibe drops of inspiration. Recently I asked a fellow meditator how she came to yoga and she recalled her story, sharing, “I was feeling a loss, that something was missing in my life. I passed the virtue board each day, read it and it gave comfort, food for thought.” She revealed that this was when she started analysing life instead of just existing day to day. She began to travel that route to work just to “read a board a stranger put out”. Then one day she made a decision to find out who was behind the postings. She entered the building of the Raja Yoga Center, our meditation center. That visit started her journey with meditation and strangers became her friends - a community. The Meditator - A Promising Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Would a meditator such as this person be eligible to take the Integrative Yoga Teacher Training program having little or no experience with the poses? Learning and teaching the subject of poses as well as meditation are all a part of this program. A good question to ask would be, What would make a meditator a suitable learner in our Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Certification Hamilton? Yoga for Wellbeing!! Enroll in our 800 hour Yoga Therapist Training

3. In my opinion, the meditator who has the interest and intention to share yoga to facilitate wellness would be a promising student in our yoga teacher training program. Her strengths would be used to great advantage. Although there are many benefits I will highlight three that lead me to this conclusion. More receptive mind: This means having an increased ability to focus and concentrate. What a fertile environment for learning! I’m so pleased that more and more educators recognize that there are gentle ways to enhance focus. So if there were score keeping, our student of meditation would earns points for attentional stability developed - focused, relaxed and calm attention. Less reactivity: Another valuable jewel in the jewelry box of the meditator is the ability to put some distance between herself and an emotion. She is less reactive to situations and people. This power can be seen as the ability to accept uncomfortable states without reacting automatically. It could be described as the power to face, or the power to tolerate depending on the circumstance. The meditator with reduced reactivity and this power has increased time and mental space for learning. That’s benefit two. Less stressed: From time to time situations that create stress pop up in a learning group. Stress can be experienced as healthy stress for a meditator, and unhealthy stress or distress for the student that is more reactive. Someone with a more reactive nervous system experiences its fight/flight/freeze response more often and with this response can come anxiety and depression. Learning requires receptivity. Benefit number three is the experience of less stressand more receptivity. With a state of readiness and a willingness to learn and teach basic poses a meditator is indeed eligible to undertake Yoga Teacher Certification Hamilton. Our teachers of yoga poses value and teach the energetic impact of poses on the health and wellbeing of the practitioner. Appreciation for poses increases. Exploring a pose means noticing how the pose feels and not primarily what it looks like. Grimacing, cringing, pushing through and suffering in silence to achieve an image in the mind reduces the value to the practitioner. Contrary to what some students of yoga think, one is not supposed to feel pain practising poses. Every pose has a simple version and even that form can be modified or avoided altogether for the benefit of the practitioner. A teacher of therapeutic yoga will encourage working “with the body and not against the body”, as Vanda Scaravelli an influencer in my hatha yoga practice emphasizes.

4. An interesting point to note is that the study of yoga as described by Patanjali, the compiler of an important yoga text, is the study of eight subjects. All eight subjects are in the curriculum of the program. Asana or poses is one of the eight subjects or limbs. The outer limbs are ethics or integrity, spiritual observances, poses, breathing, withdrawal of senses. The inner limbs are focus, meditation, and abiding peace. There are branches and types of yoga that isolate one or two of these limbs and this emphasis can be mistaken for the be all and end all of yoga. But I digress. From Diminished to Wild and Ever Expanding Dreams As a female descendent of the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean with ancestry reaching far back for millennia into the values and light of Africa, it is my intention as a student of yoga to continue to emancipate myself from unconscious mental slavery with the means available from Western strategies. Thank you, Bob Marley, for the words in Redemption Song. Those words “emancipate yourself from mental slavery” resonate even more. The historical legacy of colonization has left its mark on the unconscious mind and on the perceptions of both the colonizer and the colonized. How can yoga address specifically the limited belief systems embedded in the unconscious of the oppressed and the oppressor? In addition, what methodologies have evolved in the Western world to help heal these chronic mental and emotional conditions? Yoga philosophy explains the faculties of the mind and offers yoga meditation to address the levels of the mind and achieve the aim of yoga - liberation. Yogis aim to remain undisturbed by the worldly or the spiritual, and abide in a state of peace, beyond the ups and downs of joy. My concern however is that more and more people learn how to use these faculties of the mind and move towards their potential as a human being. How can meditation/yogic attainments be used to reclaim a lost self, a self completely wiped out, obliterated from our imagination and wildest dreams? What are some of the behaviours, thought patterns, and beliefs of the unconscious, colonized mind? How do we expand our truth, actually see the world of other human beings, and awake dormant energies? These are some of the questions we reflect upon in our teaching and learning programs. Every now and then I experience that my mind and body holds the past and present. It was in one quite weird circumstance I heard the voice of the past sharing secrets of my ancestors - ancestors enslaved and the ones never enslaved. Here is the story. Once while at lunch break during a Kundalini yoga teacher training, I walked close to a lake in Ontario and noticed one area was home to a yacht club. How exciting and inspiring it would be to descend into that tucked away area and walk along its water’s edge, I imagined.

5. Cold water instantly fell on this enthusiasm for in a quick second an overriding thought popped into my head - I was not permitted to enter the yacht club because of the color of my skin. In reflection I now wonder whether this was the voice of the oppressor or the oppressed. A conversation with myself followed. I knew the source of that voice of restraint. It came from a damaged psyche with roots in Barbados. Another voice reminded me that the No Blacks Allowed policy was not the situation here in Ontario. And furthermore it was no longer the case that people with black skin could not enter the yacht club in my place of birth, Barbados. That proclamation by the powers that existed in time past had ended years ago. Yet somewhere in my being the message of exclusion resided, and shook me to wake to a new reality. I did enter the area of the yacht club very mindfully, and I deliberately strolled along the water’s edge with steps that released restraints and reclaimed greatness. The whole experience of the voices from the past surprised and guided me to my core. I wondered had I not developed self awareness and the ability to witness as a person who meditates would I have unconsciously avoided the area? Would I have noticed the resistance I felt to enter the area? Would I have heard the voice? I left the surroundings in deep thought and questioning began. Questions such as, What other restrictions hold my precious being captive? The yoga teacher training Reset your being and claim bigger dreams According to the ancient yoga philosophy, ignorance of one’s true identity is the cause of suffering and conditions like an enslaved mind. In my opinion this state where the unconscious, colonized mind keeps the person restrained is a state of dysfunction, a mental state that maintains the status quo. I speak as a student and lover of truth and justice for all. This observation of dysfunction is not a diagnosis from a health care practitioner.

6. In retrospect I recognize two patterns of dysfunction from the unconscious, colonized mind when over some years my mind was set on: ● achieving and maintaining abiding peace for myself as an independent individual the result of which was alienation and a reduced sense of belonging in community. ● being content to experience inner peace and other resources from more traditional forms of meditation, without consciously engaging in reclaiming a truly liberated unconscious mind. A colonized mindset is one trained so the person functions as a tool. Busy doing, getting and doing even more with little time to self reflect and discover who she is and what she really wants out of her life. She fails to stretch towards full potential without specific support and alienated from community. She may be a meditator resting in the abyss of bliss having achieved a dream for inner peace, without realizing she can choose to get up and stand up for personal and spiritual rights and wealth. What excites me is the idea that knowledge and skills can and must be made available and accessible to liberate the unconscious of those who wish within African communities. I feel empowered knowing there is an evolving plan to increase capacity of those caring professionals who serve Black populations so they can “coach” their clients for no less than success. What has been your experience in removing unhelpful conditioning? Share in the comments below.